


Linger

by StaringAtTheTwinSuns



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Can possibly be read with past Luke/Biggs vibes because I hc that but can also be read as pure gen, Candy, Canon Compliant, Canon Relationships, Friendship, Gen, Gen Work, Gift Giving, Memories, Tatooine, Young Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 05:46:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14442666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StaringAtTheTwinSuns/pseuds/StaringAtTheTwinSuns
Summary: Biggs brings Luke a gift that won’t last—but years later, it still helps his memory live on.Written in response to a Tumblr prompt: "Luke and candy"Three little glimpses into Luke's relationships with Biggs, Wedge, and eventually Ben Solo.





	Linger

**Author's Note:**

> This in in response to an anonymous Tumblr prompt: "Luke and candy"
> 
> Needless to say, for a very short prompt, it got a little out of control.
> 
> Unlike most of my fics, this is canon compliant. :)

The first time Luke Skywalker saw Emezian candy art, he was seventeen, angry, and tired.

It didn’t make much sense, to have a harvest festival when the people who were actually working the harvest were stuck on their farms, milking water from the vaporators and sweat from their own skin from morning to night. It wasn’t fair that Biggs could go, that his family had enough hands to spare him. And it really wasn’t fair, that even when Luke said he couldn’t, Biggs had gone anyway, with Fixer and Tank and his other friends.

And then it was dark, and Luke had gone nowhere, done nothing—and no, Uncle Owen, he didn’t count the "important task of providing water to the people of Tatooine". He was almost done putting away his tools when he heard a soft knock on the wall of the garage.

“Hey, Luke?” It was Biggs. “Now a bad time?”

He had been, maybe, using a little too much force to slam the tools into their drawers and shut them. Hard. Not hard enough to break them, of course. Luke knew what he was doing. But hard enough to let the world—and Biggs—know exactly how he felt about the way the day had gone.

He closed the drawer, softly this time, and said. “No. Not really.” He knew he didn’t need to explain what was wrong. It was the same old thing, and Biggs already knew.

Biggs stepped down into the garage area and held out a woven shopping bag, like the ones Aunt Beru took with her to market. “Got something for you,” he said.

Luke opened the bag. “Beer?” He was technically underage, but no one really cared this far out in the desert. And real beer, in cans, still cool from an actual refrigerator, was a special treat he’d only had a couple of times before.

“What’s this?” There was something else in the bottom of the bag, wrapped in layers of protective plastic.

“Open it,” Biggs said with a grin, and popped his can open. “That’s the real gift. The beer’s more like an apology.”

Luke smiled back. “Apology accepted.” He clinked his can against Biggs’s, took a sip, and unwrapped the layers of crinkly plastic. Inside was a little Krayt dragon, crafted in amazingly minute detail in what looked like green, yellow, and clear glass, and mounted on a wooden stick.

“What is it?”

“Candy.” Biggs smiled, and then laughed at the surprised expression on Luke’s face. “It’s Emezian candy art. Completely edible, except for the stick. It's a traditional art form. There are only a handful of people in the galaxy who still make it.”

“You can  _ eat  _ this?” Luke held the dragon up to the light. Its fangs and scales and claws were done in almost-perfect scale, and tinted with a brownish color that shone orange in the dying sunlight.

“You can.”

“I don’t think I’d want to.”

Biggs shrugged. “It’s up to you. I’ve got to get home before sunset, but Luke?”

“Yeah?”

“We’ll go together next year, right?”

Luke saw Biggs to his speeder, polished off the rest of his beer, and filled the empty can with sand to weight it. Then he stuck the Krayt dragon in it, and put it on the table by his bed, next to his model T-16.

He thought about eating it, the next day and the next, but dust gathered and caked between the scales. And so it stayed there, whole and uneaten. For all Luke knew, somewhere under the rubble of his old home, the candy dragon stuck in a beer can was still there.

***

The first time Luke tasted Emezian candy art was six years after that, on the medical frigate  _ Redemption. _ They’d docked at the Emez system for supplies before moving on to the Alliance base, where Luke and Leia would finally be able to get their own ships, and make the final leg of the trip to Tatooine.

Luke wasn’t expecting visitors. When the door to his room opened, he thought it was Leia, or maybe Threepio. He definitely wasn’t expecting to see Wedge.

“Wedge!” He jumped up from the bed, tossed his datapad aside, and ran across the room to wrap his friend and—former now, he supposed—wing-second in a hug. “It’s good to see you. What are you doing here?”

“Came to see you, mostly. You look good, Luke.” His eyes flicked, just for a second, to Luke’s artificial right hand.

“I’m doing pretty good,” Luke said. “Better than I was a couple of weeks ago.” It wasn’t really supposed to be a joke, but whatever it was fell flat, and the smile on Wedge’s face started to fade.

He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I brought you something. Biggs said you liked these, once upon a time."

This time, Luke didn't need to be told what it was. “Emezian candy art!” he said. “This is where it’s from, right?” He looked out the window at the planet below, and wished, with a bittersweet pang, that he’d taken Leia up on her offer of a surface excursion.

“Thank you, Wedge.” Luke took the candy sculpture—this one shaped like an X-wing, with red insignias, yellow lights, and the blue dome of an astromech droid in as close to the right places as anyone could hope a non-pilot to come up with.

“I told the artist you were a pilot, and she made it just for you. It’s fascinating, to watch the way they shape the candy, add the colors.”

“It’s perfect,” Luke said, and brushed the tips of his fingers against one of the perfect, delicate S-foils. At least, it was supposed to be a brush. But his mechanical hand was stronger and less sensitive than the flesh it had replaced, and Luke still wasn’t as used to it as he knew he needed to be.

The S-foil tumbled to the floor, where it broke in half again, and the impossibly thin cannon rolled across the floor to rest centimeters from Wedge’s shoe.

“Wedge.” Luke felt his face fall, and he clenched his hand into an awkward fist. “I’m sorry. I…”

Wedge bent to pick up the cannon, blew off the non-existent dust, and smiled. “It’s all right,” he said. “They’re a little bit fragile. But there’s still plenty left to eat.”

“Eat?”

“Of course.” Wedge laughed. “It’s candy. You eat it. That’s what it’s for.”

“Oh. Right.” It would have been silly to try to keep it anyway, when they’d be leaving the ship in a few days. It wasn’t as if Luke had a room of his own, here or anywhere in the galaxy, or a bedside table to decorate with another sand-filled beer can.

“Luke?” Wedge gave the X-wing a pointed look. “Everything okay?”

Luke shook his head—not to say no, but just to shake away the memory. “Just… just thinking about Biggs.”

He hadn’t, in a long time, and that suddenly made him feel guilty. Not for finding friendship in Han and Leia and Wedge and the guys in the squadron. But for not thinking about Biggs. Not talking about Biggs. Not helping him live on the way he should.

And he felt a little guilty for not eating that Krayt dragon, all those years ago. For never knowing what it tasted like. He’d lost it in the end, anyway.

Luke took another of the S-foils between his fingers—gently this time, concentrating to get the pressure exactly right. He snapped it off, and held it out to Wedge. “Here,” he said. “Let’s try it.”

“To Biggs?” Wedge held the bit of candy up like a toast, and Luke thought again of that night. Of the candy and the beer.

“To Biggs.” He broke another of the S-foils off, and clinked it against Wedge’s in the air. And then he tasted it: sweet and citrusy on the yellow parts, berry tones in the blues and the reds.

It melted slowly, lingering in his mouth long after the shape of it was gone. And he folded the rest up its plastic wrapping to share later with Leia and Lando. And Han.

***

The first time Luke saw Emezian candy art being made, he was nearing the end of one of the most exhausting missions of his life.

“Come on, Ben!” He gestured to his nephew, who dragged his feet on the cobbled streets and stuck his lower lip out in a pout. It had been a fun day, but they were both tired, and it would feel good to get back to the shuttle, and back home to Han and Leia, who had needed a day off as much as Luke and Ben had needed a little adventure and some bonding time.

“Give me a ride?” Ben asked, and Luke knelt to let climb on his back. He was getting too big to do this, really, without the help of the Force. But he’d been so good all day, even though he’d missed his parents just a little, that Luke decided it would be okay to spoil him just this once.

Ben saw the line of stalls first, little carts with cloth awnings selling snacks and souvenirs, lined up along the path to the amusement park’s exit, to lure the kids in one more time before they went home. “Uncle Luke!” he cried. “Stop! Can we get some snacks for the shuttle?”

“I don’t know.” Luke shook his head. “Your mom won’t be happy if I let you spoil your appetite. We should probably—“

But something caught his eye. The wings of a blue and copper butterfly, spun into transparent not-quite-life that looked more like glass than the candy he knew it was.

“Look at this, Ben,” he said. “Look at all the animals!”

“Can I have one of those, then?” Ben wriggled from Luke’s back and ran to the stall, where the candy artist was using small, triangular scissors to snip scales on the back of a rainbow-colored snake, and put a perfect little fork in its tongue. “It’s okay, right?” He pleaded. “I can’t get full from a  _ toy _ !”

Luke laughed, and knelt beside his nephew. “They’re not toys, they’re candy. Can you smell it?”

The stall smelled like warm sugar, like a hundred different fruits, all mixed together in the rainbow glaze.

The artist dipped a paintbrush into a tiny steaming pot, and dropped tiny specks of black in the serpent’s eyes. “There,” she said. “All done.” She smiled at Ben. “And what would you like this evening, young man? All my friends you see here are for sale.”

Ben walked up and down the length of the stall, examining each creature in turn. “This one,” he said at last, pointing to a purple fish with a hollow belly blown up like a balloon.

“An excellent choice.” The artist wrapped it in plastic, and took a number of credits from Luke that made his heart ache. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it. But to think of Biggs buying something so precious for him back on Tatooine, or Wedge, in the middle of the war….

“Look, Uncle Luke! He’s swimming! He’s swimming!” Ben waved the fish above his head, his dancing legs forgetting their fatigue. “I can’t wait to get home and show him to Mom and Dad and Uncle Chewie. They’re not going to believe it when we tell them he’s a candy, not a toy!”

“You’re right. They won’t,” Luke promised, wondering if they would remember that long-ago X-wing—Leia’s pieces mostly intact, but Han’s almost powder after months in Luke’s pocket on Tatooine.

“Maybe I’ll pretend it is a toy and freak Mom out when I put it in my mouth,” Ben said. He took backwards steps over the uneven pathway, the fish still held high above his head. “Or I could—“

He spun back around, facing forward for only a moment before his toe found a protruding rock he hadn't seen for all his spinning. In the flash of an instant, his eyes grew wide, and he  tumbled, face first, toward the ground.

Jedi reflexes were fast enough to save Ben from skinned knees and elbows; Luke wrapped his arms around the boy a split second before he would have hit the cobblestones, earning him gasps and even a little scattered applause from the dwindling amusement park crowd.

But the little purple fish, with its gold-laced fins and black-dot eyes and round, hollow, blown-glass belly, went flying out of reach, still wrapped in its sheath of plastic, and shattered into pieces on the stones.

Ben looked down at it, silent for a minute. And then he closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and bawled.

And the part of Luke that had made him keep that Krayt dragon, that still twinged when he remembered the broken X-wing, the part of him that saw himself in this powerful, quiet, private but overemotional boy ached--however silently--too.

"Ben?" Luke spoke softly, with his voice and with the Force, and held Ben close, offering what comfort he could. He knew better than to offer to buy another piece of candy--Ben had chosen the fish, and Luke knew his nephew well enough to know that, now, nothing else would do. "Do you want to know the best thing about Emezian candy art?"

Ben shook his head, and wailed again. His tears continued to flow.

But he was listening. Luke could sense that much, and so he kept talking in a calm, even voice, with all of the love he could give. "It's beautiful, isn't it? And it's easy to forget, maybe because it's beautiful to look at, that it's beautiful in another way, too." He took the bag, with the bits of the fish still inside it, and twisted it open to spill the glassy pieces into his hand. "Try it." And he chose one of the larger pieces, and gave it to Ben. "It's candy, remember? I haven't had it in years. But from what I remember, it's the most delicious candy in the world."

Ben sniffled, but he put the bit of candy in his mouth, and little by little, the tears on his cheeks began to dry.

"It's good," he said. "You want a piece, Uncle Luke?"

Luke smiled. "If you're sure you want to share?" And when Ben nodded, he took another, smaller, piece, and put it in his mouth to melt away.

"This is good," he said. "It reminds me of Wedge--You remember Uncle Wedge, right, Ben?"

Ben nodded.

"And of our friend Biggs." Ben stood, and Luke followed, trying to brush the dust from his clothes and only succeeding in turning his black pants an awful shade of beige. "Have I ever told you about Biggs, Ben?"

Ben shook his head. "No. Is he a pilot?"

"He was," Luke said, and took Ben's hand as they headed for the speeder. "He was the best bush pilot in the Outer Rim. And a hero. And one of the best friends I've ever had."

**Author's Note:**

> Emezian candy art is based on the Japanese art of amezaiku: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amezaiku
> 
> The many flavors are the only thing that is not more or less based on my (very limited) experience of amezaiku... the absolutely gorgeous shapes and craftsmanship are 100% real.


End file.
